On the obverse is a portrait of the goldsmith Laux Kreler (ca. 1486 – 1552); the reverse is blank. The hardwood models for this medal and its pendant of Kreler’s wife Elisabeth are preserved in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich.(1) Curiously, the date 1520 on the medal (and on the model) is inconsistent with the age of Kreler and seems to have been altered in the model.(2) Lucas (“Laux”) Kreler was an Augsburg goldsmith. The medal has been ascribed to Hans Kels junior, but more recently this attribution has been abandoned in favor of one to an anonymous master working in the Upper Rhine area.3 This is a sharp contemporary cast.

Catalogue entry from: Frits Scholten. The Robert Lehman Collection. European Sculpture and Metalwork, Vol. XII. Frits Scholten, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Princeton University Press, 2011, p. 155.